Jews, Christians, & Creative Minorities

Sacks’ main argument comes in his engagement with Toynbee, who presumed that creative minorities press toward empire, wishing to make their vision of reality universal. The one minority that does not fit into this pattern are Jews, and thus Toynbee dismisses Judaism as historically impotent. Impotent? What about the Jewish teacher whose name was Jesus?

Here Sacks zeroes in on Toynbee’s one-sided grasp of culture, which assumes what Sacks calls the Hellenistic view in which influence always seeks to maximize itself through domination. But there is also the Hebraic view. This view does not seek to become universal; it does not construct an empire. Its influence comes from the particularity of love, or to use more traditional theological terms, faithfulness to covenant.

The analysis Sacks provides helps us see that from the Enlightenment forward progressives and liberals were a creative minority of Toynbee’s sort. They sought to displace the ancien regime. They succeeded. Today the West is under their domination. Thus our age promises a new universal empire, one characterized primarily by globalized economic relations and animated by a doctrine of universal human rights.

Christians differ from Jews. Christianity has a missionary impulse that seeks universality. But the similarities are strong as well, not just in the concentration of Jewish particularity in the person of Jesus, but also in our historical moment. In the new secular Enlightenment empire Christians are becoming more and more like Jews. We are a discordant minority, whom modern secular liberalism treats as an archaic residue of an earlier era that has been superseded by reason and progress—an ironic recapitulation of the ways in which Jews were so often treated by the dominant Christian majority in earlier centuries.

So, believing Jews have always been a creative minority, and now they’re fast being joined by believing Christians. Reno says that Rabbi Sacks did not dismiss the seriousness of the present moment’s challenges, but offered “a pathway for creative hope rather than impotent anger.”

I think the concept of Christianity enduring as a “creative minority” offers hope. Not the full cafeteria menu of hope if by calling one’s self a Christian, one assumes the ability to rely upon the protection and comforts of a society that is informed by Christian belief and principles. But hope in the sense of the existential hope that Jesus offers. A hope which, by the way, transcends the physical and the temporal, but which does not exclude the possibility of suffering, even suffering unto death.

From the perspective of a Christian who has lived in the coccoon of 20th-21st Century America, these are easy words to type. I do not live, for example in one of the Nigerian states that is on the frontier of Christian Africa and the Dar-al-Islam. But what if life as a Christian and life among a community of Christians should come to resemble life as a Jew in the Pale of Settlement in the Russian empire? What if the social upside for a Christian is represented by the life of a Jewish merchant in late 19th Century Vienna, or a Jewish researcher at a German university during the same period? Here’s an open and intriguing question – would Christians in such contexts contribute to the advancement of human knowledge and understanding in the same manner as did the Jews of those times and circumstances?

Christians once did so. They became known in the first few centuries of their existence as people who walked their talk, who honored their families, who engaged in trade honorably, who were generous to each other and tho those around them, and who were bold enough to face death for holding to their faith in the face of the wanton cruelty of the dominion of pagan Rome.

The ability to dictate Christan principles through the mouthpieces and the mechanisms of government may diminish, or go away entirely. The thing called Christendom, with its messy bundle of temptations, opportunities and – yes – achievements (would Wilberforce have existed in a pre-Christian Europe, and has he existed in the Dar-al-Islam?) may some day no longer avail itself to Christians. However, hope, and the call to live as God’s people, remain timeless and transcendant.

There seems to be a big invented issue of late, recent books and so forth that reveal that Jesus was a Jew, like that’s some great revelation. It could be many marginal Christians may not have really understood that, but not so with Christians that actually read their bibles. Of course he was a Jew. But, and its a very big but, he moved beyond the Jewish law. He said “I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” He made it clear that the law was needed because men’s hearts were hard. By then the Jewish law had already become very detailed with laws governing almost every aspect of daily life. But he preached putting the law in one’s heart. In fact, he was criticized for not following the letter of the law. He preached love, even for ones enemies, turning the other cheek when struck, and forgiveness. Early Christians considered that he perfected Judaism, or brought it to the next level. And yes, he told his disciples to go preach the gospel to the entire world. But not to create an empire. That’s just absurd. He made it clear many times that his empire was not of this earth. The Jews were looking for an earthly messiah to reign over an earthly empire, which is why the Jewish religious establishment rejected Jesus’ message.

When Christianity becomes an official religion of the state is when it loses its way. Its very much unchristian. The state then uses Christianity as a reason for wars when the real reason is the same as always – the desire to increase power.

Richard, thank you for your comment. It is basically the first of two parts to how I approach the culture war that dominates our politics today. I’ll add my second part in this comment. As always, people are free to express the like or dislike for my opinions. I wouldn’t be expressing them if I was unsure about their worthiness or unwilling to weather the criticism that I’m sure to get for them from certain, more ideological persons.

The existential hope of Christians is exactly our power, both intellectually and politically. We don’t need endless discourse to justify opinions that remain constantly abstract yet forever changing and evolving. That is the way of ideologues, the progressives in particular. We can have confidence that an honestly lived Christian existence realizes the best of humanity because we can trust in the revelation of our God, through the Bible, Christ, and the holy men and women of the church.

However, the ever expanding role of the federal government and influence of progressivism has ensured that one impulse in our country remains not only unstifled, but expanded in durability and extent. This is the democratic impulse, our ability to elect our own leaders.

I consider this impulse crucial to the eventual defeat of progressivism. Unlike the classical liberals who wrote our Constitution and then the progressives who are currently undermining it, the vast majority of America does not live in thrall of political movements or intellection at all. Their understanding of the social issues that our country faces come from how those issues relate to their own life and community. If a person does truly believe that Christianity’s moral teaching speaks deep truths about human nature and the human condition, then that person can remain confident that progressive social experimentation will spectacularly fail, in full view of the voting public.

So yes, we may have to compromise with progressives on the issue of gay marriage and possibly many other social issues at the heart of the culture war in order to preserve our autonomy. But what’s to say that in a generation or two, the ordinary people of America won’t have realized that the incredible liberation they received at the hands of progressivism was in point of fact a descent into the more hellish forms of human existence.

I would submit to you that a person with a fully trusting faith in the truth and veracity of the Christian God can make such a declaration. I’ll end with an endlessly used quote from Winston Churchill that summarizes my whole argument, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.

Empires, in fact, have a history of using certain minorities to help administer the empire. To put the best face on this, these were people that they trusted. To put the worse face on this, these were people who were there to take the blame when things went wrong.

Being caught between the actual power and the angry, hungry mob is a European historical phenomena for Jews. When looking at the Middle East one needs to think about the possible internationalization of this bitter past.

“which assumes what Sacks calls the Hellenistic view in which influence always seeks to maximize itself through domination. But there is also the Hebraic view.”

This sort of oversimplified opposition between Hellenistic and Hebrew culture, which presumes an essence for each, is itself a product of the very post-Enlightenment world that is being criticized. The Greek world was way, way, way too diverse complicated to be reduced to a single principle- whether that principle be positive (freedom!) or negative (universalizing imperialism). The same is true for the Hebrew world. The impulse to see each as a principle, and then use that principle to criticize current society, strikes me as distinctively modern, Hegelian even. Rather than helping you escape the long arm of the Enlightenment, it will keep you under it’s spell. I think that’s probably for the best, since I like the Enlightenment, but I can’t imagine that it’s where you want to end up.

Sacks’ main argument comes in his engagement with Toynbee, who presumed that creative minorities press toward empire, wishing to make their vision of reality universal. The one minority that does not fit into this pattern are Jews, and thus Toynbee dismisses Judaism as historically impotent.

Invade-the-world neoconservatism and in fact many aspects of modern liberalism in general, would seem to refute this. George Soros, Armand Hammer, Leon Trotsky – while perhaps Jews have not tried to create a Jewish empire, the imperial impulse to remake the world and the ability to do it, at least in part, seems very strong in Jews.

For that matter, there are quite a few Jews who have been influential in almost every political movement – Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Paul Gottfried…

Sacks’ main argument comes in his engagement with Toynbee, who presumed that creative minorities press toward empire, wishing to make their vision of reality universal. The one minority that does not fit into this pattern are Jews, and thus Toynbee dismisses Judaism as historically impotent

Is Toynbee ever wrong on this. Jews, not only like other creative minorities (also known as “middleman” minorities) but more so than any other such minority, have for millenia cozied up to and ensconced themselves within imperial authorities, and have prospered under polyglot empires, as opposed to ethnoreligiously cohesive nation-states in which Jews are more conspicuous, and thus more vulnerable. The record is long: Joseph* in Egypt; Daniel in Babylon; Esther in Persia; the Sadducees and Pharisees manipulating the gullible Pilate into ordering the Crucifixion; Jewish courtiers and financial middlemen throughout medieval and Renaissance Christendom; Islamic Spain; the Ottomans; Austria-Hungary; pre-Nazi Germany; the USSR and its satellites; and the crown jewel, the United States. If this is “impotence,” who needs vigor?

* The term “Jew” is technically anachronistic when applied to Hebrews/Israelites alive before the division thereof into separate kingdoms following the death of Solomon, and thereafter to the citizens of the northern of these two states, destroyed and absorbed by the Assyrians.

Jesus was a Jew in the same manner that George Washington was a Briton. Both statements, in and of themselves, convey factual accuracy — but by themselves, without any further elaboration, these historical facts become lies through their omissions.

Washington was indeed a Briton. He was a British subject for the majority of his life, and, depending on how one measures, a majority of his adult life. He served the Crown loyally in war. But to stop there and go no further is a distortion of the truth. Of course we remember Washington today as the leader of a rebellion against British colonial rule and the single person responsible more than any other for establishing the stability of the newly independent Republic.

Likewise, with Christ, to call him a Jew, full stop, is a distortion of the truth. Modern Judaism is descended from the Pharisees, who came to dominate Judaism virtually completely after the First Roman-Jewish War of 66-73. Jesus’ relationship to that sect needs no recapitulation to commenters here. Judaism has defined itself for the last two millenia in opposition to Christianity more than by any other single factor. To this day, the one thing on which all Jews, from bearded haredim to atheist radicals to keyboard warrior neocons, can agree is that the mamzer from Nazareth was not who he and his followers claimed (and claim), and that assent thereto by an MoT — not opposition to Zionism, not marrying a shiksa, not genuflecting to a Buddha statue, not the fiercest atheistic denunciations of the Jewish religion — gets said membership revoked, immediately and permanently.

I didn’t listen to the lecture but the premise strikes me as a bunch of crap. Western Christianity cannot be a creative minority after being the basis of empire for so long. It is still thrashing around trying to find a way to reestablish itself as the basis of empire. Judaism, since the advent of Zionism has started to have characteristics of empire building. And Orthodox Judaism, at least the kind that we have her in Brooklyn (and upstate in Monsey, Liberty, Kiryas Joel, and in Lakewood, NJ) are definitely world-consuming.

“In a different time or a different country, the good authority of the church might have been enough to defeat progressivism. Unfortunately this is America; our country and Constitution were born from the philosophy of classical liberalism,”

Ethan: Your comment here completely overlooks the influence of the Puritans, Huguenots and other religious groups who came to America precisely to escape the “good authority of the church”. In colonial times, all of Europe was ruled by Christian Kings who used the authority of the Church to advance their personal and political agendas. Which, as these deeply religious people learned the hard way, made it very unhealthy to belong to a denomination the King didn’t like. Be careful what you wish for.

There seems to be no reason why Christians, like Jews, can’t reimagine themselves as a creative minority.

Throughout the history of Christianity, whenever we start to envision Christ as the transformer of culture, it is inevitably Christ who becomes domesticated by the culture. The radical message of the Cross becomes diluted into a pallid moralism.

In my view, that’s the gist of social conservatism. It wants to restore the pallid moralism that prevailed during the years of the mainline consensus. It is little more than a vain, man-centered effort to immanentize the eschaton.

Of Niebuhr’s five models of Christ and Culture, the one seems to fit best with the Christ of the Gospels is what Niebuhr describes as Christ and Culture in Paradox.

We can only be a creative as Christians when we realize that there’s a fundamental paradox between the present kingdom and that of Christ. Attempts to bridge the gap only end up compromising and domesticating Christ’s kingdom and reducing it to moralism.

Jews are a creative minority because they recognize the fundamental tension between the claims of their religion and those of the culture, and appreciate that nothing can be done to relieve the tension. While orthodox Christians may sense a tension, they too often want to get rid of it instead of embracing it. I tend to think that it’s time for us to embrace the tension.

I’d tend to say that Judaism is at root a missionary religion; there are elements of that teaching in the Torah, it actively proselytised in the Roman Empire before Constantine, and groups like the Lubavitschers proselytise today, forming Noachide communities.

Judaism stopped proselytising because, under Christianity or Islam, it would have been a death sentence to do so. Jews were not consistently ill-treated in Christendom, but would have been had they made converts. An analogous group is Christians in the Middle East; it is not true that dhimmis have always been ill-treated, but, even during tolerant eras, proselytising by Egyptian or Syrian Christians would have led to genocide, and those Christians therefore accepted their religion as a purely hereditary one.

I must admit that all of this strikes me as a bunch of irrelevant word games, sound and fury, signifying nothing. God is no doubt more complex than the mind of man can comprehend, but its probably all quite simple in the mind of God. Meantime, I prefer, in matters of religion as in much else, to stick with a few basics and dismiss the rest as esthetically amusing speculation.

Is Toynbee ever wrong on this. Jews, not only like other creative minorities (also known as “middleman” minorities) but more so than any other such minority, have for millenia cozied up to and ensconced themselves within imperial authorities, and have prospered under polyglot empires

I think he was referring to a context of theology — i.e., Judaism is not a proselytizing religion. And, furthermore, Judaism posits that (moral) non-Jews go to heaven, too.

I’d tend to say that Judaism is at root a missionary religion; there are elements of that teaching in the Torah, it actively proselytised in the Roman Empire before Constantine

Whether that was the case or not (do we know of any forced conversions before Constantine?) — it certainly hasn’t been the case for the last millennium-and-a-half. And that’s what R Sacks is referring to: that Jews survived for the past 1500 years without trying to construct an empire, or impose its beliefs on others.

That is how much mainstream Judaism interprets them. The Chabad Lubavitsch gives a slightly different interpretation; e.g. Christianity is condemned, as idolatry and polytheism. They then proceed to proselytise “Noachism” to Gentiles, this being a religion with meetings on Saturdays, Torah study, etc., effectively very similar to Judaism, although they don’t claim Noachides are actually Jews, and they don’t circumcise them, or insist on them following the dietary laws (they do make it easy for Noachides to convert to Orthodox Judaism if they wish). They argue that in effect that the Jews are the priesthood, the Noachides the laity, and everyone on earth must convert to Noachism.

I must say, I found this all pretty freaky as well, but you can look it up on the Internet.

Noah172 says: “Modern Judaism is descended from the Pharisees, who came to dominate Judaism virtually completely after the First Roman-Jewish War of 66-73. Jesus’ relationship to that sect needs no recapitulation to commenters here.”

True. But Jesus lived, taught and was crucified 30-40 years before the war and therefore 30-40 years before cultural dominance of the Pharisees. Whatever the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, the “Jesus was Jewish” scholarship looks at the diversity of late Second Temple Judaism and locates his teaching there. What you are describing is the relationship between the Gospels (especially Matthew and Luke) and the Pharisees.

It is, of course, a contentious and deeply divided branch of scholarship, with a wide range of opinions. But these scholars wouldn’t find relevant what happened decades or centuries after the death of the figure being investigated. To return to your analogy, it would be like saying George Washington was not British and basing that claim on events that occurred in the war of 1812.

Noah, your commments on Judaism are always wrong in every respect, scarily so, and to argue against them constantly would be both time consuming and fruitless, but I couldn’t let this one pass unnoted:

“To this day, the one thing on which all Jews, from bearded haredim to atheist radicals to keyboard warrior neocons, can agree is that the mamzer from Nazareth was not who he and his followers claimed (and claim), and that assent thereto by an MoT — not opposition to Zionism, not marrying a shiksa, not genuflecting to a Buddha statue, not the fiercest atheistic denunciations of the Jewish religion — gets said membership revoked, immediately and permanently.”

First, of course, most religions outside Christianity do not believe that Jesus was divine. To put this in the form of some kind of indictment is absurd. Second, you are simply and fundamentally wrong to suggest that the definitive act determining one’s place in Jewry is acceptance of Jesus. Of course, converting to Christianity is a leaving of the Jewish faith, not an expulsion from it. Furthermore, it is denial of God, not Jesus, that is THE definitive act of apostasy. The most telling example of this fact is the harsh excommunication of Spinoza, which had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. Furthermore, you seem quite ignorant of the fact that until only recently, orthodox parents would “sit shiva” – the act of mourning for the dead – if a child intermarried. (This practice was discontinued in recent years with the large increase in intermarriages.) The simple fact is that in religious Jewish schools and homes Jesus is rarely if ever even mentioned. The idea that one’s attitude toward him and the Christian faith in general is the key element in the Jewish faith – as opposed to the positive emphasis on obeying Jewish law – is as I suggested, simply and fundamentally absurd.

First, of course, most religions outside Christianity do not believe that Jesus was divine. To put this in the form of some kind of indictment is absurd.

That wasn’t Noah’s point. His point was that the majority of the Jewish community does not seem to have any religious requirements for being Jewish other than not being Christian. Bu-Jews, atheist Jews, are fine, but not Christian Jews.

Furthermore, you seem quite ignorant of the fact that until only recently, orthodox parents would “sit shiva” – the act of mourning for the dead – if a child intermarried.

I don’t think orthodox Jews represent what Americans would see as “mainstream Judaism.”

Glaivester, you’re even more off the deep end than Noah. First, he specifically included all Jews, including Haredi – not merely “mainstream,” whatever that is. Reread what he wrote. Second, he talked about instantaneous revocation of membership – who exactly performs the revocation? Finally, it is quite bizarre that you, and by your lights he, suggest that the only religious requirement for being Jewish is not being Christian. That’s some circular, reductive argument you guys have going there.

Noah, your commments on Judaism are always wrong in every respect, scarily so

Well, that’s an absolute statement.

Just because you disagree with what I write, or don’t want to admit to yourself that I ever have a valid point, does not mean that I am “always wrong in every respect, scarily so.”

you are simply and fundamentally wrong to suggest that the definitive act determining one’s place in Jewry is acceptance of Jesus… it is quite bizarre that you, and by your lights he, suggest that the only religious requirement for being Jewish is not being Christian

That’s not quite what I or Glaivester were getting at. What I meant was that rejection of the messianic claims of Christ is the one thing that every of the many and widely divergent factions of Jewry can agree on as normative for Jewish identity. Yes, of course orthodox Jews add adherence to orthodoxy as a further requirement of Yiddishkeit, but most Jews aren’t Orthodox, and even many (most?) Orthodox do not see their less-frum or even totally un-frum coethnics as somehow non-Jewish because these latter groups do not uphold kashrut and shabbos and all that business. As a mirror image, liberal/secular Jews see tikkun olam “social justice” lefty politics as essential to Yiddishkeit, but the Orthodox disagree.

As Glaivester pointed out, a Jew’s practicing Buddhism or some other non-Christian religion, or rejecting all religion entirely, does not result in a perception from all other Jews, orthodox and otherwise that said Jew may no longer identify himself with The Tribe (although obviously orthodox Jews do not approve of such behavior). Conversion to Christianity, by contrast, does indeed elicit such a reaction, across the Jewish spectrum, I must emphasize. Look at the opposite reactions of Jews to Buddhist Jews vs. Messianic Jews.

Furthermore, it is denial of God, not Jesus, that is THE definitive act of apostasy

There are lots and lots of atheist Jews who still identify themselves, and who are identified by other Jews, as Jews. If non-theism got one kicked out of The Tribe, then Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin were goyim.

The idea that one’s attitude toward him and the Christian faith in general is the key element in the Jewish faith – as opposed to the positive emphasis on obeying Jewish law

Most Jews don’t give a fig for obeying Jewish law — e.g., in the US only a sixth keep kosher or attend shul weekly — and thus, by your definition, aren’t genuine Jews. You are entitled to that belief if you want, but most Jews, even many/most Orthodox, do not see things that way.

“a Jew’s practicing Buddhism or some other non-Christian religion, or rejecting all religion entirely, does not result in a perception from all other Jews, orthodox and otherwise that said Jew may no longer identify himself with The Tribe (although obviously orthodox Jews do not approve of such behavior). Conversion to Christianity, by contrast, does indeed elicit such a reaction, across the Jewish spectrum”

Really? So a Jew who converts to Islam is still Jewish “across the spectrum”? Please.

Really? So a Jew who converts to Islam is still Jewish “across the spectrum”? Please

You know, I was thinking of making a side point about Islam, but thought it would be an unnecessary tangent.

Since you bring it up, my answer is no, a Jew’s conversion to Islam doesn’t carry quite the same impact with fellow MoT’s as a conversion to Christianity. To be sure, many/most Israelis and many/most Orthodox would consider conversion to Islam a revocation of the convert’s Jewish identity, but many/most secular and liberal diaspora Jews would not: among the latter group, embracing Islam would be another instance of the vibrant diversity which liberal Jews ceaselessly congratulate themselves for celebrating.

It’s politics, Sheldon: liberal diaspora Jews have historically feared and loathed Christianity* more than they have feared and loathed Islam, to the extent that they have feared and loathed Islam at all, which a nontrivial portion of liberal diasporans do not. Israelis, by contrast, face real and immediate threat from Islam, and virtually none from Christianity**, hence a stronger potential revulsion at an MoT’s defection to Islam versus a defection to Christianity.

* the reasons for which are a lenghthy discussion to be had elsewhere

** Well, liberal diaspora Jews face no serious threat from Christianity either, although many do imagine such a threat.